Boomerang
by autumnangelwrites
Summary: Somehow, Damian's mind always wandered back to Talia al Ghul.


**a/n:** _I'm almost done! Also, I really like how this turned out, even if my chronology is sketchy and the ending is way too abrupt. You have no idea how long it took me to sit down and actually type this whole thing out._

* * *

 **18\. Boomerang**

When Damian is three years old, he is battered and bruised and incredibly solemn. He has long passed the days when he teetered around the halls of his grandfather's palace, and his training is constantly growing more complex. Despite his new bruises, he feels excitement bubble up as he walks towards his mother's suite. Her visits are getting rarer, and Damian knows that he should start distancing himself from her, but he can't help himself. His grandfather is solemn and strict, always preaching about how trust is a luxury that assassins can never afford and how he would someday transform the world with his knowledge and power. Damian hated those speeches; he would much rather sit with his mother and listen to stories about his father.

It's become a game between them, guessing his father. Damian knows that it's a test, an attempt to gauge his skill, but his mother looks different when she talks about the mysterious man and Damian enjoys the change. When she gets too close to Grandfather, she becomes cold and callous, and it's a startling change for the toddler. When the two of them are alone, Talia will often tell Damian stories of her travels, of the history of his birthplace, of her own childhood. She is much warmer in those times, although there is always an insurmountable distance between the two of them. Trust is a luxury, after all.

The best nights are when his mother hugs him.

Tonight is not one of those nights, but Damian is content in her presence anyway. She is moving around her quarters with a grace that Damian quietly envies, never appearing hurried, but always moving with a purpose. Once he enters, though, his mother sets down her things and pats a space on the bed. Damian loves that he can sit in her presence; Grandfather makes him stand or kneel.

"Have you figured out who your father is, child?" Talia asks, her voice soft and sweet and incredibly calming. Damian relaxes for the first time that week.

"Not yet, Mother," he answers respectfully. His mother smiles slightly, then moves to join him on the bed.

"Would you like another hint, then?"

Damian spends the next hour and a half listening to the rise and fall of his mother's voice and thinks about how he could never want anything more.

* * *

When Damian is five, he discovers the identity of his father. He is in his mother's room again, but she is preoccupied by some last minute errand for Grandfather and he has the rare opportunity to explore. Though he knows his mother values her privacy, Grandfather has been teaching him to take every opportunity presented to him, and the slightly ajar trunk at the end of his mother's bed is too good of an opportunity to pass up.

After putting on the outfit—which is ridiculously huge on him and has the lingering smell of something spicy—the identity of his long absent father is obvious. The Batman. Grandfather talked of him often, but never with the sense of wonder that his mother had.

His mother congratulates him on his finding, though she berates him for snooping around her quarters, and he is presented with a reward. His mother has recordings of his father, who is obviously unaware of the camera's presence, and these clips give Damian a sense of the man he is meant to be. He studies the footage carefully, working extra-hard to perfect his training so that he might be rewarded with more videos, and tries to imagine how his father would react to him.

His mother tells him that he will be able to meet the man, and Damian is determined for the meeting to be perfect. The footage of his father keeps him company far more often than his mother does, though he has to carefully hide the videos from Grandfather. For the first time, he feels a little torn. He respects his mother, feels a fondness for her that Grandfather discourages, and knows that he will always hold her in high regard. This new figure, though, is enchanting. Damian wants to know him, imitate him, take whatever has captivated his mother and apply it to himself. He must be perfect, after all. That was the whole reason for his being. He looks at this new man as a mentor, and he learns as much as he can, and he sometimes wonders what it would be like to meet him in person.

* * *

When Damian is ten, Talia announces that he is to go live with his father. Damian has progressed far from his childish fascination with the man, but he still feels excitement bubbling in the pit of his stomach. The moment he has trained for is finally here, and he can't wait to see what his father will think. Not that he needs Bruce Wayne's approval, of course.

His mother sweeps him into one last hug, and he lets himself enjoy it, even as he dodges the knife thrust toward his gut. Such a thing had become routine just after his sixth birthday, and he was used to remaining alert even within the familiar presence of his mother. Though she had been gone for over a year, her voice and her smell were still the same, and his last thought before being shuffled into a car was that there was no way his father would ever come close to what his mother meant to him.

When Damian actually met his father, that thought became fact.

When his father died, Damian's feelings about him were no longer relevant. Trust was a luxury, and so was affection.

* * *

When Damian was still ten, Dick Grayson took Bruce Wayne's place as Damian's legal guardian. Damian hated the man. He was everything his father had wanted in a son, and his bubbly presence never failed to remind Damian just how far off the mark he had ended up. So much for making his father proud.

Despite Damian's hard feelings for Grayson, he couldn't help the awe that flowed through him at times. It wasn't that Grayson was overly impressive in battle; he took risks, moved more like a gymnast than a vigilante, told _stupid_ jokes in the heat of battle, and treated Damian like a kid the majority of the time. No, what Grayson impressed him with was his willingness to _love._

Damian had never loved someone before. He had respected, he had felt fondness, but he had never allowed his affection for someone to completely affect his actions like Grayson had. And the really amazing thing was that Grayson decided to love _Damian._

Not at first, of course. But in time.

And Damian loved Grayson back.

Sometimes Damian stared up at the ceiling until dawn crept through his window, wondering what his mother might say if she could see him now. It hurt, and he tried to push such thoughts away. Still, at the darkest time of night, the thoughts returned, because now he had someone that he held in higher regard than his mother.

* * *

When Damian is twelve, he tells his mother that he's decided to live with his father permanently. He doesn't make a big deal of it, doesn't bring it up to the rest of the family, doesn't even inform his father that his mother has disowned him.

He thinks that the high bounty on his head did a pretty good job of that anyway.

The truth is, the separation from his mother aches. It's not the physical distance that tugs at him—he had had plenty of time to adjust to his mother's absence, starting at a young age—but the emotional distance. Though Damian had been distancing himself from his mother for years, it wasn't the same as being cut off from her completely. She was never the nurturing type, and her self-professed love for him had been an obvious extension of her obsession with Bruce Wayne, but Damian treasured the blurry memories he had of her voice and her stories.

Still, he had changed his way of life to better fit with his father's, and he _liked_ it. He didn't like his father's hesitance to trust him, of course, and he didn't like the way the rest of the adopted brats talked about him, but he felt a certain pride about his life as Robin that he hadn't felt in his League training since his mother had first began trying to gut him during their hugs.

Plus, the pride that Grayson took in Damian's work was gratifying.

Sometimes, though, when Grayson is busy and the rest of the family is set on making Damian feel as ostracized as possible, Damian wonders if he made the right choice. He can't help but feel like he's the prize in some grand contest between his parents, and he hates it.

* * *

Damian is thirteen when he packs his things, sneaks away from his family, and returns to his mother. He tells himself that it's the right thing to do, even if the action makes him feel hollow. He tries to channel his three year old self, tries to regain some of that fondness that he had for his mother in an effort to make the action a little more bearable.

Knowing that he will very likely die at her hand does not inspire fondness.

It's funny, sort of, that Damian's life will begin and end with his mother. He knows her true nature, and he knows that she isn't above using him as a pawn to get back at his father. There's no helping it, though; if any of his brothers got involved, they would be slaughtered. If his father attempted to shield him, his mother would redouble her efforts to tear Damian away.

That's what Damian liked to imagine, anyway. It was so much better than thinking that his father might not come at all.

* * *

When Damian approaches his mother, she gives him a cold smile, and he knows he was right to expect the worst. Still, there is something about the way her hair falls, or the faint smell of perfume in the air, and Damian can almost imagine himself as a toddler, awkwardly perched on Talia's bed as she reads him another eagerly anticipated story.

"What's wrong, my son? Has your silly little excuse for a family abandoned you? Oh, don't look so distraught. Come, let me tell you about your father's _true_ nature."

And Damian settles in, ready for his last story, and tells himself not to waste his time hoping for some kind of miraculous intervention.

After all, hoping was a luxury.

Grandfather would be so proud.

* * *

 **end notes:** _Okay, so I probably screwed up in all kinds of ways. I know that Damian is sent to live with Bruce, that Bruce gets lost in the time stream about two months after Damian comes to Gotham, that Dick partners up with Damian for about a year until the time stream spits Bruce back out, that Damian refuses to return to his mother when she comes to get him, and that he eventually goes to her and dies at the hands of his adult clone brother. WHEW. So basically, with all of those details, I made up all of Damian's feelings throughout those times, and then I guesstimated Dami's ages through it all. I hope you guys were able to stick with me._

 _Also, I know I mentioned it in the fic, but I really feel like I should just say that I absolutely love exploring Talia's obsessive love/complete resentment of Damian. I think that is one of the coolest dynamics, because I believe that there were times when Talia acted like a really good mom (after all, why would Dami feel so committed to her?) but then I feel like there are times when she looked at Damian and absolutely hated him because he was a reminder of Bruce. Just a thought._


End file.
